Trevor-Roper was made a life peer in 1979 on the recommendation of Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton.[1] Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a wide range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. His essays established Trevor-Roper's reputation as a scholar who could succinctly define historiographical controversies. In the view of John Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". [2] On the other hand, his biographer, who is not an historian, claims that "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed." [3]

Trevor-Roper's most widely read and financially rewarding book was titled the The Last Days of Hitler (1947). It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From his interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries. Trevor-Roper's reputation was damaged in 1983 when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries and they were shown shortly afterwards to be forgeries.

During World War II, Trevor-Roper served as an officer in the Radio Security Service of the Secret Intelligence Service, and then on the interception of messages from the German intelligence service, the Abwehr.[5] In early 1940, Trevor-Roper and E.W.B.Gill decrypted some of these intercepts, demonstrating the relevance of the material and spurring Bletchley Park efforts to decrypt the traffic. Intelligence from Abwehr traffic later played an important part in many operations including the Double Cross System.[6]

He formed a low opinion of most pre-war professional intelligence agents, but a higher one of some of the post-1939 recruits. In The Philby Affair (1968) Trevor-Roper argues that the Soviet spy Kim Philby was never in a position to undermine efforts by the Chief of German Military Intelligence Abwehr, AdmiralWilhelm Canaris, to overthrow the Nazi regime and negotiate with the British government.[5]

In November 1945, Trevor-Roper was ordered by Dick White, the then head of counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin, to investigate the circumstances of Adolf Hitler's death, and to rebut the Soviet propaganda that Hitler was alive and living in the West.[7] Using the alias of "Major Oughton", Trevor-Roper interviewed or prepared questions for several officials, high and low, who had been present in the Führerbunker with Hitler, and who had been able to escape to the West, including Bernd Freytag von Loringhoven.[8] For the most part, however, Trevor-Roper relied primarily on the investigations and interviews already completed by hundreds of British, American and Canadian intelligence officers.[9][10] He did not have access to Soviet materials. Working very rapidly, Trevor-Roper drafted his most famous book, The Last Days of Hitler in which he described the last ten days of Hitler's life, and the fates of some of the higher-ranking members of the inner circle as well of key lesser figures. Trevor-Roper transformed the evidence into a literary work, with sardonic humour and drama, and was much influenced by the prose styles of two of his favourite historians, Edward Gibbon and Lord Macaulay. Trevor-Roper claimed he received a death threat from someone in Portugal who claimed to represent the Stern Gang for exalting Hitler.[11] The book was cleared by British officials in 1946 for publication as soon as the war crimes trials ended. It was published in English in 1947; six English editions and many foreign language editions followed.[9]

Trevor-Roper was famous for his lucid and acerbic writing style. In reviews and essays he could be pitilessly sarcastic, and devastating in his mockery. In attacking Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History, for instance, Trevor-Roper accused Toynbee of regarding himself as a Messiah complete with "the youthful Temptations; the missionary Journeys; the Miracles; the Revelations; the Agony".[13]

For Trevor-Roper, the major themes of early modern Europe were its intellectual vitality, and the quarrels between Protestant and Catholic States, the latter being outpaced by the former, both economically and constitutionally. In Trevor-Roper's view, one of the major themes of early modern Europe was expansion.[14] By expansion, he meant both overseas expansion in the form of colonies, and intellectual expansion in the form of the Reformation and the Enlightenment.[14] In Trevor-Roper's view, the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries can ultimately be traced back to the conflict between the religious values of the Reformation, and the rationalistic approach of what became the Enlightenment.[14]

Trevor-Roper argued that history should be understood as an art, not a science, and that the key attribute of a successful historian was the power of their imagination.[14] He viewed history as full of contingency, with the past neither a story of continuous advance nor of continuous decline, but the consequence of particular choices made by particular individuals at the time in question.[14] In his studies of early modern Europe, Trevor-Roper did not focus exclusively upon political history, but sought to examine the interaction between the political, intellectual, social and religious trends of the period.[14]His preferred medium of expression was the essay rather than the book. In his essays in social history, written during the 1950s and '60s, Trevor-Roper was influenced by the work of the French Annales School, especially Fernand Braudel, and did much to introduce the work of the Annales school to the English-speaking world.

In Trevor-Roper's opinion, the dispute between the Puritans and the Arminians was a major, although not the sole, cause of the English Civil War.[14] For him, the dispute was over such issues as free will and predestination, and the role of preaching versus the sacraments, and only later over the structure of the Church of England.[14] The Puritans desired a more decentralised and egalitarian church with an emphasis on the laity, while the Arminians wished for an ordered church with a firm hierarchy, with an emphasis on divine right and salvation through free will.[14]

As a historian of early modern Britain, Trevor-Roper was known for his disputes with fellow historians such as Lawrence Stone and Christopher Hill, whose materialist (and in some measure "inevitablist") explanations of the English Civil War he attacked. Trevor-Roper was a leading player in the historiographical "storm over the gentry" (also known as the "Gentry controversy"), a dispute with the historians R. H. Tawney and Stone about whether the English gentry were, economically, on the way down or up in the century before the English Civil War, and whether this helped cause that war.

Stone, Tawney and Hill argued that the gentry were rising economically, and that this caused the Civil War. Trevor-Roper argued that while office-holders and lawyers were prospering, the lesser gentry were in decline. A third group, grouped around J. H. Hexter and Geoffrey Elton, argued that the causes of the Civil War had nothing to do with the gentry. In 1948, a paper put forward by Stone in support of Tawney's thesis was vigorously attacked by Trevor-Roper, who showed that Stone had exaggerated the debt problems of the Tudor nobility.[15] He also rejected Tawney's theories about the rising gentry and declining nobility, arguing that he was guilty of selective use of evidence and that he misunderstood the statistics.[15][16]

Trevor-Roper attacked the philosophies of history advanced by Arnold J. Toynbee and Edward Hallett Carr, and his colleague A. J. P. Taylor's account of the origins of Second World War. Another dispute was with Taylor and Alan Bullock over the question of whether Adolf Hitler had any fixed aims. In the 1950s, Trevor-Roper was ferocious in his criticism of Bullock for his portrayal of Hitler as a "mountebank" (i.e., opportunistic adventurer) instead of the ideologue Trevor-Roper believed him to be.[17] When Taylor offered a picture of Hitler similar to Bullock's in his 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War, the debate continued. Another feud was with the novelist and Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh, who was angered by Trevor-Roper's repeated harsh attacks on the Catholic Church.[18]

In the Globalist-Continentalist debate between those who argued that Hitler had as his aim the conquest of the entire world, and those who argued that he sought only the conquest of the continent of Europe, Trevor-Roper was one of the leading Continentalists. He argued that the Globalist case seeks to turn a scattering of Hitler's remarks made over several decades into a systematic ideology. In his analysis, the only consistent objective Hitler sought was the domination of Europe, as laid out in blueprint form in Mein Kampf.[19]

A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the “general crisis of the 17th century.” He argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break-down in politics, economics and society caused by demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems.[14]In this "general crisis,” various events, such as the English Civil War, the Fronde in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, troubles in the Netherlands, and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia, were all manifestations of the same problems.[20] The most important causes of the “general crisis” in Trevor-Roper’s opinion were conflicts between “Court” and “Country”; that is between the increasingly powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states, represented by the Court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry, representing the country.[20] In addition, he said that the religious and intellectual changes introduced by the Reformation and the Renaissance were important secondary causes of the "general crisis."[14]

The "general crisis" thesis generated controversy between supporters of this theory,and those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who agreed with him that there was a "general crisis,” but saw the problems of 17th century Europe as more economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A third faction denied that there was any "general crisis,” for example the Dutch historian Ivo Schöffer, the Danish historian Niels Steengsgaard, and the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya.[21] Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much discussion, and led experts in 17th century history such as Roland Mousnier, J. H. Elliott, Lawrence Stone, E. H. Kossmann, Eric Hobsbawm and J. H. Hexter to become advocates of the pros and cons of the theory.

At times the discussion became quite heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political conservative, rather than on effective analysis."[22] Villari accused Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the English Civil War), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part of a Europe-wide revolutionary movement.[23] Another Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper the Soviet historian A. D. Lublinskaya attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court" and "Country" as fiction, arguing there was no "general crisis;" instead she maintained that the so-called "general crisis" was merely the emergence of capitalism.[24]

In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by John Röhl endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for World War I.[25] Trevor-Roper wrote that in his opinion far too many British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all the great powers.[26] He claimed that this theory had been promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a policy of "self-censorship."[27] He praised Röhl for finding and publishing two previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.[28]

One of Trevor-Roper's most successful later books was his 1976 biography of the SinologistSir Edmund Backhouse, Bt (1873–1944), who had long been regarded as a leading expert on China. In his biography, Trevor-Roper exposed the vast majority of Sir Edmund's life-story and virtually all of his scholarship as a fraud. The discrediting of Backhouse as a source led to much of China's history being re-written in the West.

In 1960, Trevor-Roper waged a successful campaign against the candidacy of SirOliver Franks who was backed by the heads of houses marshalled by Maurice Bowra, for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, helping the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to be elected instead. In 1964, Trevor-Roper edited a Festschrift in honour of his friend SirKeith Feiling's 80th birthday. In 1970, he was the author of The Letters of Mercurius, a satirical work on the student revolts and university politics of the late 1960s, originally published as letters in The Spectator.[29]

Another aspect of Trevor-Roper’s general outlook on history and on scholarly research that has inspired controversy is his claims about the historical experiences of pre-literate societies. In accordance with Hegel[30] he remarked that Africa had no history prior to European exploration and colonisation, declaring that "there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness" with its past "the unedifying gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe."[31] These comments, recapitulated in a later article which called Africa "unhistoric",[32] spurred intense debate between historians, anthropologists, sociologists, in the emerging fields of postcolonial and cultural studies about the definition of "history."[33][34][35]

The conflict centres around what must be present in order for a society to qualify as having a "history,” Trevor-Roper arguing that it required documented evidence.[36] Many historians agreed with this central claim but think historical evidence should also include oral traditions as well as written history, the previous litmus test for a society having left "prehistory" behind.[37][38] Critics of Trevor-Roper’s claim have questioned the validity of systematic interpretations of the African past, whether by materialist, Annalist, or, like Trevor-Roper, traditional historical methods.[39][40] Some try to argue that all approaches which compare Africa with Europe or directly integrate it into European history cannot be an accurate description of African societies and cultures.[41] Virtually all scholars now agree that Africa qualifies as having a "history,"and it is possible that Trevor-Roper's statements played an indirect and unintentional, but important role in the development of post-colonial African studies by motivating discussions about Africa’s role in the present and historical world.

In 1980 at the age of sixty-seven, he became Master of Peterhouse, the oldest and smallest college in the University of Cambridge. His election, which surprised his friends, was engineered by a group of Fellows led by Maurice Cowling, then the leading Peterhouse historian. The Fellows chose him because Cowling's reactionary clique thought he would be an arch-conservative who would oppose the admission of women. In the event, Trevor-Roper feuded constantly with Cowling and his allies, while launching a series of administrative reforms. Women were admitted in 1983 at his urging. In 1987 he retired complaining of "seven wasted years."[42]

The nadir of his career came in 1983, when as a director of The Times he "authenticated" the so-called Hitler Diaries. The opinion among experts in the field was by no means unanimous; David Irving for example, initially decried them as forgeries but subsequently changed his mind and declared that they could be genuine, before finally stating that they were a forgery. Historians Gerhard Weinberg and Eberhard Jäckel had also expressed doubt regarding the authenticity of the diaries.[45] Within two weeks forensic scientist Julius Grant demonstrated that the diaries were a forgery. The incident gave Trevor-Roper's enemies the opportunity to criticise him openly.

Trevor-Roper's initial endorsement of the diaries raised questions about his integrity, because The Sunday Times, a newspaper to which he regularly contributed book reviews and of which he was an independent director, had already paid a considerable sum for the right to serialise the diaries. Trevor-Roper denied any dishonest motivation, explaining that he had been given assurances that turned out to be false about how the diaries had come into the possession of their "discoverer" and about the age of the paper and ink used in them. Nonetheless, the satirical magazine Private Eye to nickname him Hugh Very-Ropey (Lord Lucre of Claptout).

Despite the shadow that this incident cast over his later career, he continued to write and publish, and his work continued to be well received.[46]

On 4 October 1954, Trevor-Roper married Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Howard-Johnston (9 March 1907 – 15 August 1997),[47] eldest daughter of Field Marshal the Earl Haig by his wife, the former Hon. Dorothy Maud Vivian. Lady Alexandra was a goddaughter of Queen Alexandra and had previously been married to Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston, by whom she had had three children. There were no children by his marriage with her.

Hugh Trevor-Roper was raised to the Peerage on 27 September 1979, and was introduced to the House of Lords as Baron Dacre of Glanton, of Glanton in the County of Northumberland;[48] he was granted this title being a great-great-great-grandson of the Hon. and Reverend Richard Henry Roper, second and youngest son of Anne, (16th) Baroness Dacre, by her second marriage to Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham, and was in remainder to the ancient barony of Dacre.

In his last years he had suffered from sight problems, which were corrected by surgery. Trevor-Roper died of cancer in a hospice in Oxford, aged 89.[49]

Five books by Trevor-Roper were published posthumously. The first was Letters from Oxford, a collection of letters written by Trevor-Roper between 1947–59 to his close friend the American art collector Bernard Berenson. The second book was 2006's Europe’s Physician, an unfinished biography of Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the Franco-Swiss court physician to Henri IV, James I and Charles I. The latter work was largely completed by 1979, but for some unknown reasons was not finished. The third book was The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, a critique written in the mid-1970s of what Trevor-Roper regarded as the myths of Scottish nationalism. It was published in 2008. The fourth book collecting together some of his influential essays on History and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Essays was published in 2010. The fifth book was The Wartime Journals, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines, published in 2011. The Wartime Journals are from Trevor-Roper's journals that he kept during his years in the Secret Intelligent Service.

^Batey, Keith (2011). "Chapter 17: How Dilly Knox and His Girls Broke the Abwehr Enigma". In Erskine, Ralph; Smith, Michael. The Bletchley Park Codebreakers. Biteback Publishing. pp. 35–39. ISBN978-1849540780. (Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001)